Trac configuration is done by editing the trac.ini config file, located in <projectenv>/conf/trac.ini. Changes to the configuration are usually reflected immediately, though changes to the [components] or [logging] sections will require restarting the web server. You may also need to restart the web server after creating a global configuration file when none was previously present.

The trac.ini configuration file and its parent directory should be writable by the web server, as Trac currently relies on the possibility to trigger a complete environment reload to flush its caches.

Global Configuration

In versions prior to 0.11, the global configuration was by default located in $prefix/share/trac/conf/trac.ini or /etc/trac/trac.ini, depending on the distribution. If you're upgrading, you may want to specify that file to inherit from. Literally, when you're upgrading to 0.11, you have to add an [inherit] section to your project's trac.ini file. Additionally, you have to move your customized templates and common images from $prefix/share/trac/... to the new location.

Global options will be merged with the environment-specific options, where local options override global options. The options file is specified as follows:

[inherit]
file = /path/to/global/trac.ini

Multiple files can be specified using a comma-separated list.

Note that you can also specify a global option file when creating a new project, by adding the option --inherit=/path/to/global/trac.ini to trac-admin's initenv command. If you do not do this but nevertheless intend to use a global option file with your new environment, you will have to go through the newly generated conf/trac.ini file and delete the entries that will otherwise override those set in the global file.

There are two more entries in the [inherit] section, templates_dir for sharing global templates and plugins_dir, for sharing plugins. Those entries can themselves be specified in the shared configuration file, and in fact, configuration files can even be chained if you specify another [inherit] file there.

Note that the templates found in the templates/ directory of the TracEnvironment have precedence over those found in [inherit] templates_dir. In turn, the latter have precedence over the installed templates, so be careful about what you put there, notably if you override a default template be sure to refresh your modifications when you upgrade to a new version of Trac (the preferred way to perform TracInterfaceCustomization being still to write a custom plugin doing an appropriate ITemplateStreamFilter transformation).

Reference for settings

This is a brief reference of available configuration options, and their default settings.

[account-manager]

account_changes_notify_addresses

List of email addresses that get notified of user changes, ie,
new user, password change and delete user.

(no default)

allow_delete_account

Allow users to delete their own account.

enabled

auth_init

Launch an initial Trac authentication setup.

enabled

cookie_refresh_pct

Persistent sessions randomly get a new session cookie ID with
likelihood in percent per work hour given here (zero equals to never)
to decrease vulnerability of long-lasting sessions.

Allow the user to be remembered across sessions without
needing to re-authenticate. This is, user checks a
"Remember Me" checkbox and, next time he visits the site,
he'll be remembered.

disabled

refresh_passwd

Re-set passwords on successful authentication.
This is most useful to move users to a new password store or
enforce new store configuration (i.e. changed hash type),
but should be disabled/unset otherwise.

disabled

register_basic_question

A question to ask instead of the standard prompt, to which the value of register_basic_token is the answer. Setting to empty string (default value) keeps the standard prompt.

(no default)

register_basic_token

A string required as input to pass verification.

(no default)

register_check

Ordered list of IAccountRegistrationInspector's to use for
registration checks.

BasicCheck, EmailCheck, BotTrapCheck, RegExpCheck,
UsernamePermCheck

reset_password

Set to False, if there is no email system setup.

enabled

username_char_blacklist

Always exclude some special characters from usernames.
This is enforced upon new user registration.

[attachment]

Maximum allowed total size (in bytes) for an attachment list to be
downloadable as a .zip. Set this to -1 to disable download as .zip.
(since 1.0)

2097152

render_unsafe_content

Whether attachments should be rendered in the browser, or
only made downloadable.

Pretty much any file may be interpreted as HTML by the browser,
which allows a malicious user to attach a file containing cross-site
scripting attacks.

For public sites where anonymous users can create attachments it is
recommended to leave this option disabled (which is the default).

false

[components]

This section is used to enable or disable components
provided by plugins, as well as by Trac itself. The component
to enable/disable is specified via the name of the
option. Whether its enabled is determined by the option value;
setting the value to enabled or on will enable the
component, any other value (typically disabled or off)
will disable the component.

The option name is either the fully qualified name of the
components or the module/package prefix of the component. The
former enables/disables a specific component, while the latter
enables/disables any component in the specified
package/module.

The first option tells Trac to disable the
report module.
The second option instructs Trac to enable all components in
the webadmin package. Note that the trailing wildcard is
required for module/package matching.

To view the list of active components, go to the Plugins
page on About Trac (requires CONFIG_VIEWpermissions).

URL of the image to use as header logo.
It can be absolute, server relative or relative.

If relative, it is relative to one of the /chrome locations:
site/your-logo.png if your-logo.png is located in the htdocs
folder within your TracEnvironment;
common/your-logo.png if your-logo.png is located in the
folder mapped to the htdocs_location URL.
Only specifying your-logo.png is equivalent to the latter.

site/your_project_logo.png

width

Width of the header logo image in pixels.

-1

[inherit]

htdocs_dir

Path to the shared htdocs directory.

Static resources in that directory are mapped to /chrome/shared
under the environment URL, in addition to common and site locations.

This can be useful in site.html for common interface customization
of multiple Trac environments.

(since 1.0)

(no default)

plugins_dir

Path to the shared plugins directory.

Plugins in that directory are loaded in addition to those in
the directory of the environment plugins, with this one
taking precedence.

(since 0.11)

(no default)

templates_dir

Path to the shared templates directory.

Templates in that directory are loaded in addition to those in the
environments templates directory, but the latter take precedence.

(since 0.11)

(no default)

[intertrac]

This section configures InterTrac prefixes. Options in this section
whose name contain a "." define aspects of the InterTrac prefix
corresponding to the option name up to the ".". Options whose name
don't contain a "." define an alias.

The .url is mandatory and is used for locating the other Trac.
This can be a relative URL in case that Trac environment is located
on the same server.

The .title information is used for providing a useful tooltip when
moving the cursor over an InterTrac link.

The .compat option can be used to activate or disable a
compatibility mode:

If the targeted Trac is running a version below
​0.10 (​r3526 to be precise), then
it doesn't know how to dispatch an InterTrac link, and it's up to
the local Trac to prepare the correct link. Not all links will work
that way, but the most common do. This is called the compatibility
mode, and is false by default.

If you know that the remote Trac knows how to dispatch InterTrac
links, you can explicitly disable this compatibility mode and then
anyTracLinks can become InterTrac links.

[interwiki]

Every option in the [interwiki] section defines one InterWiki
prefix. The option name defines the prefix. The option value defines
the URL, optionally followed by a description separated from the URL
by whitespace. Parametric URLs are supported as well.

[milestone]

Name of the component implementing ITicketGroupStatsProvider,
which is used to collect statistics on groups of tickets for display
in the milestone views.

DefaultTicketGroupStatsProvider

[milestone-groups]

As the workflow for tickets is now configurable, there can
be many ticket states, and simply displaying closed tickets
vs. all the others is maybe not appropriate in all cases. This
section enables one to easily create groups of states that
will be shown in different colors in the milestone progress
bar.

Note that the groups can only be based on the ticket
status, nothing else. In particular, it's not possible to
distinguish between different closed tickets based on the
resolution.

Example configuration with three groups, closed, new
and active (the default only has closed and active):

# the 'closed' group correspond to the 'closed' tickets
closed = closed
# .order: sequence number in the progress bar
closed.order = 0
# .query_args: optional parameters for the corresponding
# query. In this example, the changes from the
# default are two additional columns ('created' and
# 'modified'), and sorting is done on 'created'.
closed.query_args = group=resolution,order=time,col=id,col=summary,col=owner,col=type,col=priority,col=component,col=severity,col=time,col=changetime
# .overall_completion: indicates groups that count for overall
# completion percentage
closed.overall_completion = true
new = new
new.order = 1
new.css_class = new
new.label = new
# Note: one catch-all group for other statuses is allowed
active = *
active.order = 2
# .css_class: CSS class for this interval
active.css_class = open
# .label: displayed label for this group
active.label = in progress

The definition consists in a comma-separated list of accepted
status. Also, '*' means any status and could be used to
associate all remaining states to one catch-all group.

The CSS class can be one of: new (yellow), open (no color) or
closed (green). Other styles can easily be added using custom
CSS rule: table.progress td.<class> { background: <color> }
to a site/style.css file
for example.

(since 0.11)

[mimeviewer]

max_preview_size

Maximum file size for HTML preview. (since 0.9)

262144

mime_map

List of additional MIME types and keyword mappings.
Mappings are comma-separated, and for each MIME type,
there's a colon (":") separated list of associated keywords
or file extensions. (since 0.10)

text/x-dylan:dylan, text/x-idl:ice, text/x-ada:ads:adb

mime_map_patterns

List of additional MIME types associated to filename patterns.
Mappings are comma-separated, and each mapping consists of a MIME type
and a Python regexp used for matching filenames, separated by a colon
(":"). (since 1.0)

text/plain:README|INSTALL|COPYING.*

pygments_default_style

The default style to use for Pygments syntax highlighting.

trac

pygments_modes

List of additional MIME types known by Pygments.

For each, a tuple mimetype:mode:quality has to be
specified, where mimetype is the MIME type,
mode is the corresponding Pygments mode to be used
for the conversion and quality is the quality ratio
associated to this conversion. That can also be used
to override the default quality ratio used by the
Pygments render.

(no default)

tab_width

Displayed tab width in file preview. (since 0.9)

8

treat_as_binary

Comma-separated list of MIME types that should be treated as
binary data. (since 0.11.5)

This component is used by the notification system to send emails.
Trac currently provides SmtpEmailSender for connecting to an SMTP
server, and SendmailEmailSender for running a sendmail-compatible
executable. (since 0.12)

SmtpEmailSender

ignore_domains

Comma-separated list of domains that should not be considered
part of email addresses (for usernames with Kerberos domains).

(no default)

mime_encoding

Specifies the MIME encoding scheme for emails.

Valid options are 'base64' for Base64 encoding, 'qp' for
Quoted-Printable, and 'none' for no encoding, in which case mails will
be sent as 7bit if the content is all ASCII, or 8bit otherwise.
(since 0.10)

URL of the main project web site, usually the website in
which the base_url resides. This is used in notification
e-mails.

(no default)

[query]

default_anonymous_query

The default query for anonymous users. The query is either
in query language syntax, or a URL query
string starting with ? as used in query:Trac links.
(since 0.11.2)

status!=closed&cc~=$USER

default_query

The default query for authenticated users. The query is either
in query language syntax, or a URL query
string starting with ? as used in query:Trac links.
(since 0.11.2)

status!=closed&owner=$USER

items_per_page

Number of tickets displayed per page in ticket queries,
by default (since 0.11)

100

ticketlink_query

The base query to be used when linkifying values of ticket
fields. The query is a URL query
string starting with ? as used in query:Trac links.
(since 0.12)

?status=!closed

[roadmap]

stats_provider

Name of the component implementing ITicketGroupStatsProvider,
which is used to collect statistics on groups of tickets for display
in the roadmap views.

DefaultTicketGroupStatsProvider

[search]

default_disabled_filters

Specifies which search filters should be disabled by
default on the search page. This will also restrict the
filters for the quick search function. The filter names
defined by default components are: wiki, ticket,
milestone and changeset. For plugins, look for
their implementation of the ISearchSource interface, in
the get_search_filters() method, the first member of
returned tuple. Once disabled, search filters can still
be manually enabled by the user on the search page.
(since 0.12)

Whether Wiki formatter should respect the new lines present
in the Wiki text.
If set to 'default', this is equivalent to 'yes' for new environments
but keeps the old behavior for upgraded environments (i.e. 'no').
(since 0.11).

default

restrict_owner

Make the owner field of tickets use a drop-down menu.
Be sure to understand the performance implications before activating
this option. See
Assign-to as Drop-Down List.

Please note that e-mail addresses are not obfuscated in the
resulting drop-down menu, so this option should not be used if
e-mail addresses must remain protected.
(since 0.9)

false

workflow

Ordered list of workflow controllers to use for ticket actions
(since 0.11).

ConfigurableTicketWorkflow

[ticket-custom]

[ticket-workflow]

The workflow for tickets is controlled by plugins. By default,
there's only a ConfigurableTicketWorkflow component in charge.
That component allows the workflow to be configured via this section
in the trac.ini file. See TracWorkflow for more details.

(since 0.11)

[timeline]

abbreviated_messages

Whether wiki-formatted event messages should be truncated or not.

This only affects the default rendering, and can be overriden by
specific event providers, see their own documentation.
(Since 0.11)

enabled

default_daysback

Default number of days displayed in the Timeline, in days.
(since 0.9.)

30

max_daysback

Maximum number of days (-1 for unlimited) displayable in the
Timeline. (since 0.11)

90

newticket_formatter

Which formatter flavor (e.g. 'html' or 'oneliner') should be
used when presenting the description for new tickets.
If 'oneliner', the [timeline] abbreviated_messages option applies.
(since 0.11).

oneliner

ticket_show_details

Enable the display of all ticket changes in the timeline, not only
open / close operations (since 0.9).

false

[trac]

auth_cookie_lifetime

Lifetime of the authentication cookie, in seconds.

This value determines how long the browser will cache
authentication information, and therefore, after how much
inactivity a user will have to log in again. The default value
of 0 makes the cookie expire at the end of the browsing
session. (since 0.12)

0

auth_cookie_path

Path for the authentication cookie. Set this to the common
base path of several Trac instances if you want them to share
the cookie. (since 0.12)

(no default)

auto_preview_timeout

Inactivity timeout in seconds after which the automatic wiki preview
triggers an update. This option can contain floating-point values. The
lower the setting, the more requests will be made to the server. Set
this to 0 to disable automatic preview. The default is 2.0 seconds.
(since 0.12)

2.0

auto_reload

Automatically reload template files after modification.

disabled

backup_dir

Database backup location

db

base_url

Reference URL for the Trac deployment.

This is the base URL that will be used when producing
documents that will be used outside of the web browsing
context, like for example when inserting URLs pointing to Trac
resources in notification e-mails.

(no default)

check_auth_ip

Whether the IP address of the user should be checked for
authentication (since 0.9).

The preferred language to use if no user preference has
been set. (since 0.12.1)

(no default)

default_timezone

The default timezone to use

(no default)

genshi_cache_size

The maximum number of templates that the template loader will cache
in memory. The default value is 128. You may want to choose a higher
value if your site uses a larger number of templates, and you have
enough memory to spare, or you can reduce it if you are short on
memory.

128

htdocs_location

Base URL for serving the core static resources below
/chrome/common/.

It can be left empty, and Trac will simply serve those resources
itself.

Advanced users can use this together with
trac-admin ... deploy <deploydir> to allow serving the
static resources for Trac directly from the web server.
Note however that this only applies to the <deploydir>/htdocs/common
directory, the other deployed resources (i.e. those from plugins)
will not be made available this way and additional rewrite
rules will be needed in the web server.

Order of the items to display in the mainnav navigation bar,
listed by IDs. See also TracNavigation.

wiki, timeline, roadmap, browser, tickets, newticket, search

metanav

Order of the items to display in the metanav navigation bar,
listed by IDs. See also TracNavigation.

login, logout, prefs, help, about

mysqldump_path

Location of mysqldump for MySQL database backups

mysqldump

never_obfuscate_mailto

Never obfuscate mailto: links explicitly written in the wiki,
even if show_email_addresses is false or the user doesn't have
EMAIL_VIEW permission (since 0.11.6).

false

permission_policies

List of components implementing IPermissionPolicy, in the order in
which they will be applied. These components manage fine-grained access
control to Trac resources.
Defaults to the DefaultPermissionPolicy? (pre-0.11 behavior) and
LegacyAttachmentPolicy? (map ATTACHMENT_* permissions to realm specific
ones)

DefaultPermissionPolicy, LegacyAttachmentPolicy

permission_store

Name of the component implementing IPermissionStore, which is used
for managing user and group permissions.

DefaultPermissionStore

pg_dump_path

Location of pg_dump for Postgres database backups

pg_dump

request_filters

Ordered list of filters to apply to all requests
(since 0.10).

(no default)

resizable_textareas

Make <textarea> fields resizable. Requires JavaScript.
(since 0.12)

true

secure_cookies

Restrict cookies to HTTPS connections.

When true, set the secure flag on all cookies so that they
are only sent to the server on HTTPS connections. Use this if
your Trac instance is only accessible through HTTPS. (since
0.11.2)

disabled

show_email_addresses

Show email addresses instead of usernames. If false, email
addresses are obfuscated for users that don't have EMAIL_VIEW
permission. (since 0.11)

false

show_ip_addresses

Show IP addresses for resource edits (e.g. wiki). Since 1.0.5 this
option is deprecated and will be removed in 1.3.1. (since 0.11.3)

false

timeout

Timeout value for database connection, in seconds.
Use '0' to specify no timeout. (Since 0.11)

20

use_base_url_for_redirect

Optionally use [trac] base_url for redirects.

In some configurations, usually involving running Trac behind
a HTTP proxy, Trac can't automatically reconstruct the URL
that is used to access it. You may need to use this option to
force Trac to use the base_url setting also for
redirects. This introduces the obvious limitation that this
environment will only be usable when accessible from that URL,
as redirects are frequently used. (since 0.10.5)

disabled

use_chunked_encoding

If enabled, send contents as chunked encoding in HTTP/1.1.
Otherwise, send contents with Content-Length header after entire of
the contents are rendered. (since 1.0.6)

false

use_xsendfile

When true, send a X-Sendfile header and no content when sending
files from the filesystem, so that the web server handles the content.
This requires a web server that knows how to handle such a header,
like Apache with mod_xsendfile or lighttpd. (since 1.0)

false

wiki_toolbars

Add a simple toolbar on top of Wiki <textarea>s.
(since 1.0.2)

true

xsendfile_header

The header to use if use_xsendfile is enabled. If Nginx is used,
set X-Accel-Redirect. (since 1.0.6)

Reference for special sections

[components]

This section is used to enable or disable components provided by plugins, as well as by Trac itself. The component to enable/disable is specified via the name of the option. Whether its enabled is determined by the option value; setting the value to enabled or on will enable the component, any other value (typically disabled or off) will disable the component.

The option name is either the fully qualified name of the components or the module/package prefix of the component. The former enables/disables a specific component, while the latter enables/disables any component in the specified package/module.

The first option tells Trac to disable the report module. The second option instructs Trac to enable all components in the webadmin package. Note that the trailing wildcard is required for module/package matching.

See the Plugins page on About Trac to get the list of active components (requires CONFIG_VIEWpermissions.)

[extra-permissions]

[milestone-groups]

(since 0.11)

As the workflow for tickets is now configurable, there can be many ticket states,
and simply displaying closed tickets vs. all the others is maybe not appropriate
in all cases. This section enables one to easily create groups of states
that will be shown in different colors in the milestone progress bar.

The definition consists in a comma-separated list of accepted status.
Also, '*' means any status and could be used to associate all remaining
states to one catch-all group.

The CSS class can be one of: new (yellow), open (no color) or
closed (green). New styles can easily be added using the following
selector: table.progress td.<class>

[repositories]

(since 0.12 multirepos)

One of the alternatives for registering new repositories is to populate the [repositories] section of the trac.ini.

This is especially suited for setting up convenience aliases, short-lived repositories, or during the initial phases of an installation.

See TracRepositoryAdmin for details about the format adopted for this section and the rest of that page for the other alternatives.

[svn:externals]

(since 0.11)

The TracBrowser for Subversion can interpret the svn:externals property of folders.
By default, it only turns the URLs into links as Trac can't browse remote repositories.

However, if you have another Trac instance (or an other repository browser like ​ViewVC) configured to browse the target repository, then you can instruct Trac which other repository browser to use for which external URL.

With the above, the svn://anotherserver.com/tools_repository/tags/1.1/tools external will be mapped to http://ourserver/tracs/tools/browser/tags/1.1/tools?rev= (and rev will be set to the appropriate revision number if the external additionally specifies a revision, see the ​SVN Book on externals for more details).

Note that the number used as a key in the above section is purely used as a place holder, as the URLs themselves can't be used as a key due to various limitations in the configuration file parser.

Finally, the relative URLs introduced in ​Subversion 1.5 are not yet supported.

[ticket-custom]

[ticket-workflow]

(since 0.11)

The workflow for tickets is controlled by plugins.
By default, there's only a ConfigurableTicketWorkflow component in charge.
That component allows the workflow to be configured via this section in the trac.ini file.
See TracWorkflow for more details.